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- Volume 37, Issue 2, 2018
European Journal of American Culture - Volume 37, Issue 2, 2018
Volume 37, Issue 2, 2018
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President Barack Obama’s response to the painfully familiar pattern of violence against African Americans
More LessAbstractThis article examines President Obama’s public responses to three specific incidents that received national attention and sustained media coverage: the shooting of Trayvon Martin in February 2012 that was shortly followed by a series of tragic encounters between African Americans and police officers that made headlines during Obama’s second term; the shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014 that led to massive protests across the country; and the proliferation of racially motivated attacks such as the mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015. The article also analyses the policy-oriented or privately funded initiatives that President Obama has launched in response to these tragedies: My Brother’s Keeper, following the shooting of Trayvon Martin, and a plan to strengthen the relationship between police officers and the communities they serve following the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and the brutal response of the Ferguson Police Department.
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Interpreting violence: The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and its legacy
More LessAbstractThe article analyses aspects of the 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma Race Riot and War. In the first part, it presents a brief history of Tulsa, Oklahoma and the reasons that triggered the clash that devastated Greenwood, the black part of Tulsa. The next section focuses on the role of the Red Cross in the relief project for the support of thousands of homeless African Americans, and deals with the long legal struggle for reparations and the role of the legal system in the failure to punish the guilty for the devastation of Greenwood. The last part of the article presents the controversy generated by the renaming of one of Tulsa’s main streets and the direct connection to the city’s violent and racial past. The legacy of segregation is deeply rooted in the American past; the use of the Tulsa Riot and War as a case study demonstrates the impact of racial conflicts on society and the necessity to identify and resolve relevant problems.
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Transport and Turmoil: The turbulent racial history of transport in New Orleans
More LessAbstractRace and transportation have long been interwoven in New Orleans. Yet while other states across the south responded to growing white supremacist ideology by passing Jim Crow segregation laws, Louisiana did not legislate against its black population until 1890. Conflict arising from segregated transit ensured that transport has always held a contentious place in race relations in Louisiana particularly in its largest city of New Orleans. In 2014 the advocacy group Ride New Orleans published a startling analysis of transport since Hurricane Katrina devastated the streetcar and bus network. The results identified a significant racial disparity in the level of transport provided for white and non-white residential areas in the city. Such reports echo the city’s discriminative past and are indicative of a return to racially motivated transport policies placing African Americans in a position of conflict with the state. This article explores past policies and motivation for segregated transport in late nineteenth-century Louisiana and the environment in which the Separate Car Act (1890) became lasting legislation. With a particular focus on New Orleans the growth of white supremacy is examined to show how it garnered support for legal segregation in a city that was previously integrated de jure.
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Conflict then; trauma now: Reading Vietnam across the decades in American comics
More LessAbstractThis article will consider the shift in representations of the Vietnam War in American comics, concentrating specifically on the shift from gung-ho violence and patriotism to nuanced personal narratives of trauma and the psychological impact of conflict. I will compare and contrast three comics series: The ‘Nam, a Marvel series that ran from 1986 to 1993; The Punisher Invades the ‘Nam, a cross-over series that comprises two arcs over five issues in 1990 and 1992; and Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s The Punisher: Born ([2003] 2007), an origin story that positions trauma as a survival tool within theatre. Vietnam as a conflict event and a cultural touchstone has affected the way we view violence in the twenty-first century. I discuss how comics has measured and represented the shift in positioning of violence and conflict from earlier wars through Vietnam to the present day. I close by asking to what extent our tools and tropes for representation of violence have changed and ask if there remain some last strands of continuity from pre-Vietnam violence texts.
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Reviews
Authors: David Brauner, Emalani Case, Rona Cran, Michael Docherty, Harriet Earle, Fiona Green, Ruth Phillips, Joy Porter and Laura SpeersAbstractStates of Trial: Manhood in Philip Roth’s Post-War America, Ann Basu (2015) New York and London: Bloomsbury, 198 pp., ISBN: 9781501320422, p/bk, £28.79
The Power of the Steel-Tipped Pen: Reconstructing Native Hawaiian Intellectual History, Noenoe K. Silva (2017) Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 270 pp., ISBN: 9780822363682, p/bk, $25.95, £19.99
Life and Death on the New York Dancefloor, 1980–1983, Tim Lawrence (2016) Durham: Duke University Press, 578 pp., ISBN: 9780822362029, p/bk, £20.99
Postmodern Suburban Spaces: Philosophy, Ethics, and Community in post-war American Fiction, Joseph George (2016) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 206 pp., ISBN: 9783319410050, h/bk, £67.99
Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives, Zach Whalen, Chris Foss and Jonat han Grey (eds) (2016) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 236 pp., ISBN: 9781137501103, h/bk, £79.99
Our Emily Dickinsons: American Women Poets and the Intimacies of Difference, Vivian R. Pollak (2017) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 355 pp., ISBN: 978-0-8122-4844-9, h/bk, $55.00
Art for an Undivided Earth: The American Indian Movement Generation, Jessica L. Horton (2017) Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 296 pp., ISBN: 9780822369547, p/bk, $26.95
Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America, David J. Silverman (2016) Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ix + 354 pp., ISBN: 9780674737471, h/bk, $29.95
Hip-Hop Headphones: A Scholar’s Critical Playlist, James Braxton Peterson (2016) New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 224 pp., ISBN: 9781501308260, p/bk, £23.99
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 42 (2023)
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Volume 41 (2022)
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Volume 40 (2021)
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Volume 39 (2020)
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Volume 38 (2019)
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Volume 37 (2018)
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Volume 36 (2017)
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Volume 35 (2016)
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Volume 34 (2015)
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Volume 33 (2014)
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Volume 32 (2013)
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Volume 31 (2012)
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Volume 30 (2011 - 2012)
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Volume 29 (2010 - 2011)
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Volume 28 (2009)
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Volume 27 (2008)
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Volume 26 (2007 - 2008)
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Volume 25 (2005 - 2007)
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Volume 24 (2005)
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Volume 23 (2004)
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Volume 22 (2003)
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Volume 21 (2002)
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Volume 20 (2001 - 2002)